


Stadiums and Shrines

by eudaimon



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 17:32:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a field outside an airbase, Brad and Nate share a small moment together, once the war is no longer so much to do with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stadiums and Shrines

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally written way back in 2008 for Yuletide (the recipient was Zahra). It was my first ever Generation Kill fic and, a few nuances aside, I'm impressed by how little my characterisation has changedover the years. This contains one of my favourite ever descriptions that I've ever written of Brad. The title is taken from the song of the same name by Sunset Rubdown.

_I'm sorry anybody dies  
at all these days._

 

Sometimes (rarely, but sometimes), he lets himself think about just how much they've fucked things up by coming here. He lets himself consider the very great cost of an undertaking such as this. He's a Marine, Recon, the best of the best, and he doesn't let these considerations get in the way of him doing his job, but that doesn't mean he doesn't think about them, and deeply.

Nate lies down in the long grass, the tall, dry grass a little way from the clipped turf surrounded the base proper. He pillows his head with one folded arm. In the evening, the breeze cools the dry, hot air. Dimly, somewhere off a-ways in the distance, he can hear the men watching that footage that Lilley shot. Nate knows that he has no interest in a movie like that; he dreams about Iraq almost every time he finds his rack. In his dreams, it looks like a field not unlike the one in which he's lying, and the path that they've carved through it looks deep and dark and final. Tony Espera had asked, hadn't he, if indifference to killing was the same as enjoyment of it. Nate had never enjoyed killing, but he'd never been indifferent to it, either. If human life was sacred, somewhere, somehow, then you had to feel it, every shot you took. You had to feel that, and do it anyway. _Only the dead have seen he end of the war_ , Plato wrote. Even in the midsts of all this, he remembers his Classics.

Nate wonders if it might be possible to become indifferent to war itself, after a time...

In Iraq, what he misses most is the honest weariness that used to come over him on the top deck of Dubuque, back before the world changed; the way his muscles would ache and the sky would change while he watched it. He misses how quiet it was when the sun went down. He misses lying there thinking about how ancient sailors thought that the sun disappeared under a flat world when it set.

With his eyes closed, Nate's aware of the shadow that falls across his face. He cracks one eyelid and looks up at Brad Colbert standing there against the changing sky like some kind of Greek God, his arms folded across his t-shirt that's almost the same colour as the dusty grass. Nate looks up at Brad and he sees him spinning like a sycamore seed, running with his arms outstretched, and there's a thing that he could never become indifferent to, never in a million years.

(They call those seeds 'helicopters' because of how far they fall from the tree. It's difficult to think of Brad in terms of helicopters, when he's so spare and makes so little unnecessary noise).

Looking down at him, Brad smiles, and Nate's back to thinking about the sun again.

"Not watching the movie?" he asks, as Brad lays down beside him without being invited. On his back on the ground, Brad doesn't seem so very tall when he turns his head to look at Nate.

"Had a better offer."  
"Don't remember making any offer, Sergent Colbert."  
"And here I am, anyway."

And here he is.  
And maybe there _was_ an invitation in the way that Nate had looked at him on his way outside.

For a long time, they lie still, one beside the other. After a few minutes, Nate realises that they've fallen into breathing in sync, they way they taught them to march in basic training. In and out, in and out and Nate thinks about how he'd all but stopped breathing when he'd seen Brad chest deep in that goddamn hole because being in the line of fire because that's what they signed up for is one thing, and Brad putting himself in danger because he's just that good is something else entirely. Nate's come to think of Brad as being like a gun or a bomb, some delicate machinery of war. Something shifts, moves out of place, and he doesn't work as he should, and that's when he takes himself off until it's corrected, spends hours under his Humvee, chipping away at something that the rest of the world is never going to even see. Nate's spent his career striving to be of the most use to the men around him. An officer who isn't effective is as bad as an officer who isn't there at all. That's what he's always thought.

Sometimes, Nate wishes that Brad would let him help.

"It snows in the Gobi desert," he says, finally. He read it somewhere, and retained it. "The camels eat the snow to stay hydrated, just a little at a time."

He realises that Brad is staring at him.

"While I'm gratified to hear that the camels have adapted to an undoubtedly difficult way of life, I have to wonder what precise relevance that information has when applied to our current situation in this decidedly Iraqi desert, Sir."

Brad's got this way of looking at Nate when he's trying to provoke a reaction. When he's being an asshole, Brad gets this very particular look in his eye.

"I'm just trying to broaden your horizons," says Nate, propping himself up on one elbow, reaching out for Brad with his free hand. Every time recalls the first time, but there's ease now, where once there was this desperate need to get things done before the time ran out. They were on the edge of a war, or in the middle of it, always on the verge of being oscar mike, never enough time to linger over long limbs and dust dry skin. Now, in the snatched moments in the long grass, Nate reaches out slowly and grazes the tips of his fingers against the sliver of bare skin between Brad's t-shirt and the sagging waistband of his pants and, all the time, Brad watching him with pale eyes.

The need is still there but, by now, it's mixed in with a little grace.  
They have a little more time, now that the war isn't really anything to do with them, anymore.

When Nate shifts his ass in the dust to get closer to Brad, it's by mutual agreement: no orders, nothing come down from Godfather, not even a whispered suggestion. It just happens. It just works. Nate rolls onto his side, his hand pushing up Brad's chest to cradle the side of his neck, pulling him in for a kiss. Now, Nate can't remember how this got started, whether it was him who reached for Brad or Brad that reached for him but the kiss comes naturally, Nate's body half across Brad's. They kiss deep and lazily, the way they haven't had time to since deploying. Brad's mouth tastes of tobacco, but, underneath that, there's spit and dust. It's perfect. Nate makes a small sound, half stifled, kept in and controlled and Brad's hand shoves up the shirt at Nate's hip, his whole, broad palm against bare skin that's pale. There's some sort of irony in the fact that a Marine trained to kill has picked up a farmer's tan in the middle of the desert.

There's irony, but Nate doesn't have the capacity to give it too deep a thought not when he grinds his hips forward against Brad's thigh and Brad rocks back. It does occur to Nate to wonder what they're doing down there like that, hidden from view by the long grass but the thought is lost quickly when his hand presses down over Brad's pants and he can feel Brad already hard and Brad pushes back.

In the heat, they wear too many clothes and Nate fumbles with Brad's pants in the effort to feel smooth, hot skin. The first time that this had happened, it had been Brad's move, not Nate's. It might be easy to mistake Nate's control with repression but it isn't that he doesn't let himself feel anything; it's that he only lets through what he can deal with at any given time. They can't feel too much in their line of work. They couldn't feel too much which means that, sometimes, once in every great while, he had to let himself feel everything.

Feeling everything at once, wanting everything, Nate pushes his hand down into Brad's underwear, trying not to hurry, trying to remind him that, for once, he's got time. He's almost surprised when Brad's hand wraps tight around his wrist and holds him. He lifts his head and stares.

"No?"

The very tips of his fingers brush against Brad's dick and Brad lifts his hips in a way the definitely means _yes_. His teeth touch his lip and his head rolls back on his neck. Nate watches this happen. He eases his hand lower, as low as Brad will let him, curls his fingers and strokes Brad slowly, watching Brad's face change like the sky with the sun setting.

Brad rolls his hips up once, pressing up into the circle of Nate's fingers, fucking himself so slowly that Nate can't help but echo the movement with his own body, pressed forward against Brad's thigh.

Brad shakes his head.

"Not yet," he says.

With military precision that isn't at all surprising, Brad shifts with Nate's hand still inside his pants, Nate's fingers still curled around him, and he presses Nate down onto his back in the dust and the smashed down grass. It isn't surrender; it has nothing to do with surrender; they'd never take a member of first Reconn alive, hoo-rah. They don't surrender. Marines make do. 

On his back, Nate's already letting his knees fall apart.

Brad moves smoothly, sliding between Nate's thighs. For a moment, their bodies almost perfectly align, two spare inches getting lost in the tumble of bodies, Brad's knee between Nate's thighs, Nate leaning up to drag Brad down for a kiss.

"Desist," murmurs Brad, kissing down under Nate's jaw, so carefully and comprehensively shaved. The grooming standard might not matter in the grand scheme of things when measured against dead babies and dead marines and men losing their minds in the desert, but there's no reason to let everything go to hell.

Not when you can help it, anyway.

Nate does his best to relax, with the heels of his boots pressing into the soft, sandy soil. When he's not dreaming about Iraq, about patrolling the same streets as they patrol in the day, Nate fantasises about them having the time to undress, bare skin on bare skin, a bed with clean sheets and not just a narrow rack in the dust. Who wants to fuck in their grave, anyway?

He'd never want to fuck Brad unless he's got time to do it on his own terms.

For now, though, Brad shoves Nate's t-shirt up as he slides down, pressing a kiss between Nate's belly button and the waistband of his pants. It's a spot that most people just forget, but Nate isn't exactly surprised that it occurs to Brad. Nate lifts his hips, encouraging, and, yeah, he regrets that they don't really have to linger. Any time now, Nate's expecting to hear Ray Person telling some convoluted, obscene joke as he flattens the grass.

Every muscle in him feels coiled and ready for flight, even as Brad pulls his pants open, shoves his underwear down and exposes Nate to the hot, dry air. Nate's head falls back and he looks up at the sky again. Brad so rarely speaks without something to say, though Nate often hears him singing. Nate has no way to categorise the soft sound that Brad Colbert makes as his lips slip down over Nate's dick. Nate's back arches, the dry grass tickling at the bare small of his back where his shirt's ridden up and his fingers press through Brad's short clipped hair. He rocks upwards, fucking Brad's mouth smoothly. It never takes long, between Brad's clever tongue and knowing that they never have enough time. Nate was sixteen when he got his first blow job from a girl named Sarah and he never in a million years would he have foreseen his life turning out this way.

One of Brad's hands is pressed against Nate's belly, thumb twitching against fluttering muscles, almost stroking as Brad's head bobs in a smooth rhythm. One hand on Nate's belly...Nate lifts his head, and can't tell where the other hand is, but he can guess.

"Don't, Brad," he warns and watches, neck craned, as Brad drags his hand out of his own pants and lifts his head as much as he can. Brad curls his fingers to replace it, stroking skin wet from his mouth.

"Yessir," he murmurs, and then he gives Nate the sweetest smile that Nate's ever seen before he bends his head again, kissing the very tip of Nate's dick before licking and sucking his way down to his curled fingers.

Nate starts to count down from ten in his head, but it doesn't take that long. Brad swallows smoothly and, as always, Nate marvels, just a little. Nate never got the hang of swallowing, not entirely, and he always spits, embarrassed to be so untidy, embarrassed that he hasn't done that for Brad yet, shielding his mouth with his hand.

Brad lies down beside him in the grass, on his side this time, and Nate rolls to meet him. This time, Brad tastes of tobacco, spit and dust and come, and Nate moans when he kisses him. He only lets himself lose control for a breath at a time. Brad's fingers trace the shell of Nate's ear and Nate kisses him again, pushing his hand inside Brad's rumpled fatigues. Nate moans encouragement that Brad doesn't need really need, never needs, already rocking up into Nate's hand, fucking the circle of his fingers. Nate's willing him to be quick, cursing both of them for losing control, but, at the same time, he's back to wanting to linger. One day, he promises himself, there'll be time to pause over every inch of Brad, to stroke him slow enough to make the Iceman melt and whimper. One day, Nate Fick may grow indifferent to war, but there's a whole world to be interested in drawn in the long lines of Brad Colbert's limbs.

You have to not grow indifferent to everything.   
That's the trick.

Brad's arm tightens around his neck, pulling Nate in for a deeper kiss, and Nate's fingers tighten, stroking faster, giving Brad what he needs, want he wants, what they both want. Brad leans his forehead forward against Nate's, the tips of their noses touching and, when he comes, his eyes close like he's being kissed and Nate's vision blurs, just a bit, and he can't help but think of a poet he read once, around the time that he was sixteen, and just realising that things like this were possible outside of porn.

_in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near._

There's barely time to catch their breath before clothes are being fixed, hands wiped in grass or on the dusty seats of pants. Nate leans over to kiss Brad's bare belly as he's fastening his pants and, in return, Brad takes hold of Nate's wrist and sucks his index finger clean.

"You're going to be the death of me," murmurs Brad, properly clothed once more, leaning back on his elbows and Nate thinks better him than a bomb in a Baghdad garden.

"Twenty minutes until chow," he reminds Brad, as Brad gets to his feet and walks towards the compound, lifting his arms and holding them straight out, like the wings on a plane or a sycamore seed, his head falling back, and it isn't until he's lying there in the long grass watching Brad walk away that Nate realises why he started to talking about the Gobi in the first place.

Because, sometimes, miracles happen, even in the driest of places.


End file.
